Dear all
Please find below the second part of the latest article of the Journal
of Biblical Accuracy.
You can find the complete article here:
Fruit: What a Christian is all about
http://www.jba.gr/Articles/jbaaprmay07a.htm
You will find more biblical articles here:
http://www.jba.gr/
God bless your day
Tassos
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Fruit: What a Christian life is all about (Part II)
Fruit: pruning
I don’t know much about gardening, but I
do know this from school: that for a plant to bring
forth fruit it needs from time to time pruning. This
however is not a complete definition. Checking the
Internet I found the following definition from
Wikipedia[1]:
“Pruning in landscaping and gardening is the practice
of removing diseased, non-productive, or otherwise
unwanted ****tions from a plant. The purpose of pruning
is to shape the plant by controlling or directing
plant growth, to maintain the health of the plant, or
to increase the yield or quality of flowers and
fruits. Proper pruning is as much a skill as it is an
art, since badly pruned plants can become diseased or
grow in undesirable ways.”
Every plant needs pruning. Every plant
needs a farmer that will prune it and direct its
growth to the desirable way; who will take care of its
health, will remove the diseased parts and will
cleanse it so that it brings more fruit. The same is
true for us as branches of the Vine that is the Lord
Jesus Christ. We also need pruning and guess what: we
also have a farmer to take care of it! Again John 15
tells us:
John 15:1-2
"I am the true vine, and My Father is the
vinedresser. "Every branch in Me that does not bear
fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit
He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”
It is the Father that takes care of the
pruning. Remember again, pruning is a necessity, a
must! We cannot grow without it! And fortunately we
have someone that takes care of it: our Father. He
watches as good and careful farmer and he intervenes,
directing our growth, removing obstacles and cleansing
us so that we can produce more fruit! Isn’t this
wonderful?! Producing fruit is a matter of abiding in
Christ, producing even more fruit, to the maximum, is
a job the Father takes care of, by pruning us. It is
our job to abide in the Vine and it is the Father’s
job to take care of any pruning that is necessary to
increase our productivity.
I believe Hebrews 12:11 tells us the same
thing but with different words. There we read:
Hebrews 12:11
“Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present,
but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields
peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have
been trained by it.”
Here the author speaks about chastening
and as he says, no chastening seems to be joyful for
the present. In contrast it is painful! I believe the
same happens with pruning. When a farmer prunes he has
to cut pieces from the plant. He has to remove
deceased parts, parts that withdraw life from the
plant without being useful to it. Pruning means that
something has to be cut! Something that was normal, is
no longer normal. The farmer has interfered and cut
it. Chastening is kind of the same, isn’t it? We
chasten our children and we prune our plants. Both are
done with the same aim: to make the children better,
to make the plants more fruitful. And when God
chastens His children this may for the present be
painful, yet to those that take the lesson there is
only one thing that will be produced and this is no
other than FRUIT, peaceable fruit of righteousness as
Hebrews tell us. After all God has to do this,
because this is a job a Father that loves his kids has
to do. And He loves us very dearly. The lesson
therefore is that, as plants have farmers to prune
them, so that they make more fruit, so also we have
our beloved Heavenly Father, who is in charge of the
pruning business so that by abiding in Christ we bring
even more fruit.
Fruit: priorities and unfruitfulness
Bringing forth much fruit, brings as we saw, much
glory to God. To do this we need, as again we saw from
the Scriptures, to abide in the Vine, that is to
abide in the Lord Jesus Christ. To passionately desire
an intimate relation****p with Him as well as to desire
to satisfy and please Him and the Father. If this is
the aim, the endeavour of our life, then much fruit is
going to come out of it. But as it is obvious, this
means that God and His agenda have to have the top
priority in our lives. Or to say it differently: if
there is something that puts at risk our fruitfulness,
this is the danger of getting distracted from the
Vine, the Christ, to other things. As Jesus said in
Matthew 6:24-34 :
Matthew 6:24-34
"No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate
the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal
to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God
and mammon. "Therefore I say to you, do not worry
about your life, what you will eat or what you will
drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is
not life more than food and the body more than
clothing? "Look at the birds of the air, for they
neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your
heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value
than they? "Which of you by worrying can add one
cubit to his stature? "So why do you worry about
clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they
grow: they neither toil nor spin; "and yet I say to
you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed
like one of these. "Now if God so clothes the grass of
the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into
the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of
little faith? "Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What
shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What
shall we wear?’ "For after all these things the
Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you
need all these things. "But seek first the kingdom of
God and His righteousness, and all these things shall
be added to you. "Therefore do not worry about
tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own
things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
It is the Gentiles, the unbelievers, that
care about what to eat, to drink or to be clothed
with. But this ought not to happen for us. For us the
first thing, the top priority, what we should put
first, is the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Today more than ever, there are hundreds of things
that plead for our attention and compete for our time.
Now more than ever, we are offered hundreds of
choices. There was never an age where an individual
had so many choices. He can turn on the TV and choose
among hundreds of channels. He can go to the DVD shop
and choose among hundreds of films. He can surf the
internet and can spend his time choosing among
thousands of websites. There was no age where an
individual had so many choices in so many endeavours
that he could freely follow. But as good as this is,
all these endeavours battle for our time. They battle
for a place in our list of priorities; they battle for
a place in us. I love watching films but when I watch
too much of them, then my time is gone, and I regret
it because I end up having not enough time with God
and not enough time to do what He has called me to do.
I love getting on the internet and surfing from site
to site checking things that I like. But the thing is
that if I give much time to it then my time with God
will be next to nothing. I have to keep these things
in check because my main endeavour, my only real
valuable endeavour, is to serve God and Him alone.
Now, in this age of multitude of choices, more than
any other time, we must keep in mind what is our top
priority, the purpose that we are in this life. And
this is no other than bringing forth much fruit to the
glory of the Father. It is no other than knowing God
and have fellow****p with the Vine, Christ, and by Him
bringing forth fruit to the glory of the Father. And
this has not changed. It is the same now as it was
2000 years ago.
One more thing on this, before I close: Jesus said in
the parable of the sower about the third category that
hears the Word:
Mark 4:3-4, 7
“Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. And it
happened, as he sowed….. some seed fell among thorns;
and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded
no crop.”
And the explanation:
Mark 4: 14, 18-19
“"The sower sows the word.... "Now these are the ones
sown among thorns; they are the ones who hear the
word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness
of riches, and the desires for other things entering
in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.”
The Word was sown but it became like a
barren plant, unfruitful. Why? Because other things
got in and took the pre-eminence. What were these
other things? The cares of this world, the
deceitfulness of riches and what collectively is
called the desires for other things. These all are but
distractions that steal fruit and in this case they
stole it completely! At the end of the day we all have
to decide whom do we want to serve in this life? What
do we want to do with our lives? Do we want to spend
our lives on unfruitful distractions, on what the
world, “the Gentiles”, seek, or do we want our lives
to bring forth fruit, much fruit to the glory of God?
What is your choice? I have made the second one.
Tassos Kioulachoglou
End of part I... Go here for the complete article:
http://www.jba.gr/Articles/jbaaprmay07a.htm
Appendix
More passages about fruit: apart from the passages
given above, here are some more that speak about the
same subject.
Colossians 1:1-10
“We give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard
of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all
the saints; because of the hope which is laid up for
you in heaven, of which you heard before in the word
of the truth of the gospel, which has come to you, as
it has also in all the world, and is bringing forth
fruit, as it is also among you since the day you heard
and knew the grace of God in truth; …. For this reason
we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to
pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with
the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual
understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord,
fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work
and increasing in the knowledge of God;”
Jude 1:11-12
“Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain,
have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit,
and perished in the rebellion of Korah. These are
spots in your love feasts, while they feast with you
without fear, serving only themselves. They are clouds
without water, carried about by the winds; late autumn
trees without fruit, twice dead, pulled up by the
roots;”
II Peter 1:5-8
“But also for this very reason, giving all diligence,
add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to
knowledge self–control, to self–control perseverance,
to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly
kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these
things are yours and abound, you will be neither
barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord
Jesus Christ.”
James 3:17-18
“But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then
peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and
good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.
Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by
those who make peace.”
Titus 3:13-14
“Send Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their journey
with haste, that they may lack nothing. And let our
people also learn to maintain good works, to meet
urgent needs, that they may not be unfruitful.”
Ephesians 5:8-11
“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in
the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of
the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and
truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord.
And have no fellow****p with the unfruitful works of
darkness, but rather expose them.”
Romans 7:4-5
“Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to
the law through the body of Christ, that you may be
married to another–to Him who was raised from the
dead, that we should bear fruit to God. For when we
were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were
aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear
fruit to death.”
Romans 6:20-22
“For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in
regard to righteousness. What fruit did you have then
in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the
end of those things is death. But now having been set
free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you
have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting
life.”
End of part I... Go here for the complete article:
http://www.jba.gr/Articles/jbaaprmay07a.htm
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